Martin's Cove

The Monday and Tuesday after Thanksgiving weekend, my coworker and I had to drive to Cody, WY to do some work.  Come to find out that Martin's Cove was only about 15 miles out of the way, so we stopped by for a quick tour.  When will I ever be in the middle of nowhere Wyoming again?

Devil's Gate where the hand cart companies entered the Martin's Cove area along the Sweetwater River.

Martin's Cove

We were only there for about an hour, but I learned so much from the sweet senior missionary who took us on the tour.  I am forever grateful for all those people who went before us to establish and strengthen the Church here in the west.  I can hardly comprehend the sacrifice and suffering they endured to follow the words of the living prophet.  Here is more info on Martin's Cove and the handcart pioneers: http://lds.org/gospellibrary/pioneer/28_Martins_Cove.html.  It was sunny and still the most freezing and windy place ever.  I can't imagine it in the snow!

My Room

When I got back from staying at Amy's for Thanksgiving, Olivia had washed all my sheets and made my bed.  Bless her!  I never make my bed, so I thought I better take pictures of my room for people to see immediately.  My bed has never looked so professionally made!  So mostly for my mom...this is what my bedroom looks like in my new abode in Tricia's townhome.  It is cozy, but I love it.  Wall-to-wall king size bed!  Yes, I do have my whole entertainment system in my bed room and surround sound around my bed.

I should have taken one more picture so you should see my closet.  It is like Tetris in there.  Why do I have so much stuff?!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was interesting to say the least.  We started off the week with a cousin party at Dedo's on Sunday.  Sophie had barfed all over the place the day before at Kimberly's bridal shower.  I didn't think too much about it.  I started feeling a little weird at the cousin party.  I barfed that night and made several trips to the toilet throughout the next day at work.  Amy barfed that night as well.  Jack started barfing that same Sunday.  Thus started the week of the flu for every single person in the family (minus Dan, he got lucky!).  Here's all the cousins with Dedo at the cousin party.  Sure do love all these folks!

I was back to full strength on Tuesday.  Wednesday was Olivia's birthday.  Her brother and sister were both in town for Thanksgiving, so we had a party.  Here is a picture of me with two of her nieces (Emee and Lilly).  They loved the bike.  Kids always love the bike.  I don't get it.  Haha!  They are about the cutest little girls on earth, and we had a blast celebrating O's birthday!

On Thursday morning, me and my running crew (Brett, Tricia, Olivia, and Heather) headed down to Draper for the Utah Human Race 5k.  We have decided to make this a Thanksgiving morning tradition.  We sort of love it!  I ran my fastest 5k yet...28:38 minutes!!  I knew if I kept Tricia in my sights, I would be good to go.  I finished 4 seconds behind her...yippee!!

Amy and Kara even joined us!  Hurray for a good turkey trot and running with these two hot ladies!

We met up with a couple of other friends afterward...Haley (check out that stellar turkey hat!) and Nathan.  How Heather's hair looks so stunning after running 3 miles, I will never know.  I am always a hot mess after running!

Here's me and my girls after the race.  So proud of us!  Time to start cooking.  At this point, everyone is feeling fairly healthy.  Sophie was still not totally normal.

Jack still talks to me about the apple spinner.

Sitting down to enjoy our feast...Deeds was starting to feel sick at this point.  He barfed later that night.  All three kids barfed within 30 minutes of each other while preparing said feast.

And here are a few shots from the day...

On Friday, Kara and Isaac were ill, so we didn't get to play as much as we wanted.  They came over later that evening and we got to play one game.  Poor little Iz (and Kara)...

I had purchase a United States and dinosaur cookie cutters, so Jack and I made sugar cookies on Saturday.  Ryan was sick this day.  They headed back to Boise this day, even though Ryan was ill.  All our efforts to not spread our flu disease failed.  Deeds still wasn't on top of his game on Saturday.  It was kind of a miserable Thanksgiving, but at least we were all sick together.  We got to watch a lot of football, so that was fun!  I hate when things don't turn out the way I envision them happening.  Oh well...what can you do?!  I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was more awesome with less barf than mine!